


You May Be Right (I May Be Crazy)

by kaspbrak-tozier89 (summercarntspel)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier-centric, First Kiss, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Jewish Richie Tozier, Love Spanning Decades, M/M, Minor Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Soft Eddie Kaspbrak, Soft Richie Tozier, We got kid reddie all the way to grownup reddie, also one insensitive ptsd joke, except Georgie prob he isn't mentioned but rip?, no beta we die like men, this was a 5+1 but it is More now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:40:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23321074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summercarntspel/pseuds/kaspbrak-tozier89
Summary: *NEW VERSION OF PREVIOUS FIC*He thrusts the hand at Eddie, and Eddie screams again, louder this time.“You’re crazy!”“E-Eddie,” Bill speaks up, still laughing and leaning against Stan, who is red in the face from trying to hold his own giggles in, “I-it can’t b-bi-bite you. My d-dad says it’s f-f-fa-fan-gs are too small to b-bite.”Richie’s Daddy said that, too, and if Daddy and Mr. D both said something, it was probably true.“It’s still poisonous!” Eddie yells. He's moved out of the sandbox entirely, taking about a pound of sand with him as he tumbles into the grass, the side of his left sneaker streaked with a green stain. When he sits, he looks up at Richie and frowns, eyebrows scrunched. “You’re crazy.”---or: Eddie Kaspbrak spends most of his life telling Richie Tozier he's a goddamn lunatic.OR: Everything is inevitable.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 129





	You May Be Right (I May Be Crazy)

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the Billy Joel song "You May Be Right"
> 
> friends, romans, countryfolx, I didn't like how the original version of the fic was going and I was completely uninspired to finish it as it stood, so I pulled it down and gave it a big makeover. even if you read the orig. (THANK U IF U DID), a lot has changed in this one, and a lot of parts have been expanded, so if you liked it before, you'll probably like it even better now (I hope!!!!)
> 
> ALSO it's in third-person limited, but the POV jumps from Richie to Eddie throughout with no real rhyme or reason or than it felt right to do certain sections with a certain focus? I hope that doesn't get too confusing!

“Hey, 'chee? When can I have a turn?”

Richie scrunches up his nose. Like most six-year-olds—six and two-thirds, actually—Richie Tozier isn't super keen on sharing. He’s got a snot-nosed two-year-old with sticky fingers for a kid sister and that, combined with the burning need to get attention from Mommy and Daddy, has given the little tyke a possessive streak six times his size, so, who can blame him? He’ll share his toys when he has to, lets Kimmy bash the buttons of his Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots when Mommy says he’s got to let her have a turn, doesn’t get too mad when he finds her sucking on one of the ears of Floppy, his stuffed bunny rabbit, and sometimes pushes Eddie on the swings since his little legs don’t get him up too far yet.

Really, he tries to be a good big brother and a good buddy to his pals.

Still, he tends to argue about sharing things he really likes, like his brand-new digger truck Mommy and Daddy got him for not _being disruptive to the whole class, Richard_ , whatever that means, in Hebrew School for a month. The truck is cherry red, and the claw makes a nice scraping sound when it drags against the bottom of the sandbox, and it's absolutely Richie’s new favorite toy.

That’s why, when Eddie asks, Richie surreptitiously pulls the toy closer to himself and squints at the smaller boy behind glasses so big they take up most of his little face. “Why?”

“’Cause it’s a real neat digger truck,” Eddie explains all matter'a'fact, chocolatey puppy dog eyes blinking, and Richie’s known Eddie since the summer before kindergarten, so he recognizes the look on his face, knows it’s the same one Eddie turns to his own mommy when he bugs her about spending Friday nights at Richie’s or Bill’s house. “I’d let you have a turn if it was mine.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“I would so!”

“Not if it was new.”

“Even if it was new!”

“Nuh uh.”

“Yes huh! I would! Wouldn’t I, Billy? I would, huh?”

Richie glances over to where their other companions, Bill and Stan, are sitting in the grass. Bill is teaching Stan all the new knots he's learning in Boy Scouts, and Stan is watching him with rapt attention, reminding Bill after every knot that he's going to ask his parents that night about joining Bill’s scout troop.

“W-what? I w-wasn’t l-li-listening,” Bill says, twisting the piece of rope into a respectable trucker’s hitch.

Richie smiles at Bill, gap-toothed and silly. Big Bill’s the leader of their little pack because, in spite of his stutter, he’s the best talker of them, knows the most big words. Even when his stutter does get in the way, all the grownups are a little impressed by how well he _‘spresses himself_. That's what Mommy says, anyway.

Eddie huffs and crosses his arms, and Stan giggles behind his hand. Stan’s quiet, mostly, but he gets real giggly, and he’s half the reason Richie gets in so much trouble in Hebrew School. Eddie glares at him, and Stan just turns his full attention back to Bill, ignoring the look Eddie is still giving him. Richie, having grown bored, uses the claw arm of his digger truck to bury Eddie’s feet in the sandbox.

“Hey!” the smaller boy whines, kicking at the sand. His little white sneakers look dingy, and he pouts. “My mommy’s gonna have a fit if I bring home sand in my shoes, Richie!”

"Your mommy’s always havin’ a fit.” Richie relents, though, and stops scooping up little claw-fuls of sand to sift into the tops of Eddie’s socks.

Eddie keeps his arms crossed over his chest and frowns, jutting his lower lip out and watching Richie with sad, watery eyes. He looks like he might cry for real, and Richie almost mocks him. Instead, Richie tries to ignore him like Stan had, but after a few seconds, he gives up, heaving a very big sigh for such a small boy.

“You can have a turn,” Richie says, pushing the truck to Eddie, “But be careful with it.”

It's worth it, too, when Eddie gasps and nods, slapping his little hand against Richie’s thigh a dozen or so times in his excitement.

“I will, ‘chee, I promise!”

Richie watches as Eddie sinks to his knees in the sandbox, something he rarely does because he complains that the sand makes him itchy, and starts pushing the truck around. He gives it a voice, which is just Eddie’s voice but pitched up a little higher, nearly a squeak. Richie decides he's happy to share with Eddie, even if it is his new digger truck. He has almost as much fun watching Eddie play as he does playing with it himself.

Then, a moment later, Richie spies something in the corner of the sandbox that makes his eyes light up with glee.

Crawling along the top wooden plank is a sizable Daddy Long-Legs spider, its spindly legs tiptoeing over one of the strong nails that held the planks of the box together.

The gang of them have been pals for long enough that their roles are pretty consistent, and Richie’s most important job in the group is bothering Eddie. As it stands, he hasn't done anything to make Eddie scream in almost ten minutes, which is, even in his young mind, far too long to let the other boy be at peace.

_Forget the digger truck—_ this _is fun._

Richie hurries over, trying his best to look inconspicuous. It doesn't work well, since he trips on his untied shoelace and almost lands flat on his face, pinwheeling his arms enough to settle him just before it's too late. Eddie told him a couple’a minutes ago that he should tie them before he got hurt and, in an effort to annoy Eddie--that’s his job—he’d done the opposite. He sees Stan and Bill both stop what they're doing to watch him. Eddie, thankfully, remains more than enthralled with the digger truck.

When he gets close enough, Richie lays his hand in the spider’s path and lets it crawl on, then quickly cups his other hand over the top. It’s long legs tickle against his palm, and he looks back to Stan and Bill, still watching him, and grins like the little maniac he is, tongue poking through the gap his long-gone front baby tooth had made when the tooth fairy swapped it for a shiny dime the week before. He’d used the dime to buy a little bag of penny candy for him and Eddie to share, and he couldn’t wait to lose another tooth.

Bill grins back at him, because he, too, is a little maniac, and Stan just furrows his brow, rolls his eyes, then gestures to the rope and asks Bill a question. Stan, Richie decides then and there, is a party pooper. But that’s okay, Richie thinks, because maybe every good party needs a good pooper. At that silly thought, Richie giggles.

Richie moves back to where Eddie is kneeling and plops down beside him. When Eddie turns to smile at him, bright and happy, Richie shoves his clasped hands right under Eddie’s nose and pulls the top one away with a flourish.

“Look, Eds, I found a buddy!”

And Eddie shrieks so loud Richie hears the neighbor’s dog, Molly, start yapping on the other side of the fence, which makes Richie’s dog, Scout, run out of his doggie door and bark back. Richie and Bill all break into loud belly laughs, and even Stan, the party pooper, giggles along.

“Richie! Put that down!” Eddie squeals, wiggling away as fast as he can, digger truck all but forgotten in a half-dug tunnel in the sand, “Daddy Long-Legs are poisonous!”

“Aw, he wouldn’t poison me!” Richie sing-songs happily, letting the spider crawl over his palm to the back of his hand, skittering over the webbing of skin between his thumb and pointer finger. “We’re friends! See?”

He thrusts the hand at Eddie, and Eddie screams again, louder this time.

“You’re crazy!”

“E-Eddie,” Bill speaks up, still laughing and leaning against Stan, who is red in the face from trying to hold his own giggles in, “I-it can’t b-bi-bite you. My d-dad says it’s f-f-fa-fan-gs are too small to b-bite.”

Richie’s Daddy said that, too, and if Daddy and Mr. D both said something, it was probably true.

“It’s still poisonous!” Eddie yells. He's moved out of the sandbox entirely, taking about a pound of sand with him as he tumbles into the grass, the side of his left sneaker streaked with a green stain. When he sits, he looks up at Richie and frowns, eyebrows scrunched. “You’re _crazy_.”

“Aw, Spaghetti Head,” Richie cackles, tossing the hand not holding the spider over his heart, “I bet’cha say that to all the girls.”

“Get rid of him or I’m going home!”

Eddie crosses his arms tight over his chest, looking like a little boy who _knows_ his home phone number and _will_ use it to call his Mommy to pick him up _right now_.

Richie knows this, has heard Eddie rattle off the ten digits enough that he could probably recite them himself, might know them better than his own phone number. He also knows that Eddie’s mommy, Mrs. K, is a little funny about stuff—she is, after all, always having a fit. So, still cradling the spider, Richie walks dutifully away, plonking his little friend down on the edge of one of his mother’s flower pots. He watches as the little guy scurries off to explore the weird leafy plant.

He scampers back to Eddie and jumps on him, crushing the other boy in some cross between a body slam and a hug. He feels Eddie squirm under him for a second, then snuggle up against his chest, Eddie’s way of returning the affection of the hug.

“Will you stay for dinner now, ya big baby?” he asks, pinning Eddie to the grass.

Eddie wriggles out of his grip and skips over to the swing set on the other side of the sandbox, screaming forgotten for the moment. He sits down on the left swing and gives Richie a big grin, dimples out in full force.

“Only if you push me for ten whole minutes, weenie."

And Richie knows he’s bluffing—Eddie likes Richie’s Mommy’s spaghetti with cut-up hotdogs in it even more than Richie and Kimmy do, probably—but he doesn’t mind, not really, so he just races over to stand behind Eddie, curls his fists around the swing chain loosely above Eddie’s own.

“Hold on tight, Eddie ‘Sketti, you’re goin’ to the moon!”

\---

“Oh, fuck,” Richie swears too loudly, having banged his knee against the handlebar of Eddie’s bike for the sixth or seventh time. He’s never realized how much shorter Eddie’s bike is set compared to his own. Makes sense, he guesses. The shrimp is, like, half a foot shorter than him, after all. Still, it hurts, and his knees are probably black and blue by now, which is _great_ , will match perfectly with his double black eyes from Bill’s lucky punch.

He sighs.

After the fight that afternoon, and after Kimmy caught him stomping through the backyard and asked what happened, and after his mother had insisted on helping clean up his bloody nose and asked him no less than three times what happened—Richie didn’t have much of an answer to give her, just said he and Big Bill got into a fight and _you should see him, Mom, I did a number, knocked the stutter clean outta his teeth!_ —Richie had marched back to 29 Neibolt to collect his bike. He thought about Eddie’s bike, the only one still resting in front of the awful house, on the whole ride home, and decided to go back for it after dinner that night.

So, after picking at a meal of sloppy Joes and baked potatoes, made by his mom to help Richie feel better, and Richie skirting questions from his father and Kimmy about the darkening bruises starting to appear under his eyes, he walks back to Neibolt. Flipping the house the double-bird, and knowing full-well that if that ugly-ass clown shows his face, he’ll absolutely piss his pants, Richie grabs up Eddie’s bike and starts pedaling it in the direction of the Kaspbrak household.

Part of his brain argues that he shouldn’t go, that he and Eddie aren’t friends after what happened, but he quickly puts the kibosh on that train of thought by reminding himself that Eddie is the last person he’s upset with. He wants to wallop Bill and is done with stupid Molly Ringwald traipsing in and fucking up his friend group, but everyone else is alright in his book, and Eddie wasn’t even _there_ when Bill decked him, so, really, he’s the least to blame.

He sees Sonia’s car in the driveway and quickly parks the bike against the side of the house, knowing well enough not to ride by the big front window she likes to look out. He's going to just leave it there—he doesn't really want Eddie to see his busted face—but he sees that Eddie’s light is on and he can't help himself.

Richie shimmies up the tree outside the window with practiced precision and monkeys his way onto the thick branch that stretches outside of Eddie’s window. He peers inside the window through the gap in the sky-blue curtains.

Eddie is laying on his belly on his bed, wearing his pajamas, a comic book stretched out against the mattress. His right arm is bound tight in a stark white cast, and his eyes look heavy, sleepy. Richie wonders if he’s really that knocked out from the day or if Mrs. K made him take even more pills than normal.

Richie raises a fist to knock on the window, whacking the glass with the knuckle of his index finger in a quick rendition of _shave-and-a-haircut_ , their secret signal. Eddie looks to the window, dark eyes wide, and Richie grins at him and waves.

Eddie hurries to the window and unlatches it, sliding it up with his good arm and leaning against the windowsill. His face is scrunched up in confusion and irritation, but his eyes are still shining, so Richie counts that as a win for Trashmouth.

“Richie!” the smaller boy hisses, head snapping to look at his door, back to Richie, back to the door, back to Richie. “Are you _crazy_? My mom’ll kill you, shithead!”

Richie pushes himself into the room easily, rolling his eyes. They’ve done this enough times that he knows how to stick the landing without making more than a footstep thump.

“She’d never kill the best lover she’s ever had, Spaghetti! Who else has a _massive_ hog like me?”

Eddie shoves at him with his good arm, muttering something that sounds like _fucking nasty_ , but Richie can't be sure, then scrunches up his face some more, nose nearly pushed up between his eyes. Richie thinks he looks impossibly cute--- _now isn’t the time for that, Richie_ —until he stabs a finger against Richie’s cheekbone.

“What happened to you?”

Richie winces at the poke and bats Eddie’s hand away. The nebby-nosed little gremlin always has to poke at bruises and scabs and scrapes, whether they’re on his own body or someone else's. He'll poke and prod and ask how you got 'em, then start shouting his head off about Neosporin or some shit, and that's when Richie tunes out.

“Nothin’, don’t touch it,” Richie says, moving to sit cross-legged on Eddie’s bed, kicking off his shoes. He grabs the comic Eddie had been flipping through. “What’cha readin’, Spaghetti Man?”

“You look like someone finally punched you in the face.”

Richie winces again, because of course Eddie knows what a solid punch to the nose looks like, has nursed enough of them from Henry and his goons, and Eddie frowns as he sits back down on the bed next to him.

"Who punched you in the face? Bowers?”

Richie tosses the comic down and gestures vaguely to the window.

“I brought your bike back.”

Eddie, for once, gives up and just frowns deeper, forehead creasing. Richie thinks he must be pretty tired—he’s been on the receiving end of plenty of hours-long bitch-fests from his favorite little asthmatic, but Eddie really doesn’t look like he has the energy to lecture. He flops back against his pillows and meets Richie's gaze.

“Thanks,” Eddie says, gingerly resting his casted arm over his chest, “I wanted to go get it, but Mommy— _my mother_ —wouldn’t let me.”

Richie nods. He scootches back and stretches out beside Eddie, running the tips of his fingers over the bright white of the plaster bandages. They feel rough to the touch, and Richie absently hopes they don’t feel nearly as rough pressed up against the skin of Eddie’s forearm. He’d broken his own arm once, in third grade, after he fell out of a tree he climbed to prove he could go higher than Stan, but he couldn’t really remember how the cast felt, other than it being itchy as hell after, like, ten minutes of it being on.

“How’s your arm?” Richie asks, fingertips dancing along the edge of the cast where it wraps around Eddie’s fingers. It looks uncomfortable.

Eddie hums quietly at the touch, wiggling his fingers. He grabs Richie’s index finger between his thumb and the rough edge of the cast, holds it for a second or two, then releases it. Richie doesn't move his hand and leaves his thumb where it is, still trapped loosely between Eddie’s touch and the cast.

“Not too bad. Aches a little and the cast is itchy, but the doctor said it won't be on for too long. On the way home, my, um, mom said it could stay on for months, or, like, _years_ , but…”

Richie bobs his head again—he knows how Mrs. K is—and lets his hair fall into his eyes. He pushes it back, then settles down properly against the pillow. It smells like Eddie's prissy shampoo, the dandruff stuff Sonia makes him use even though Richie has never seen so much as a flake on the boy's head—and, trust him, he's close enough to Eddie enough of the time to notice---and Richie lets himself inhale the comforting scent of that mixed with the lavender detergent Eddie’s clothes and sheets are washed with.

“Wanna have a sleepover?” Richie asks, nudging his socked toes against Eddie’s calf. When Eddie doesn’t jump and move at the feeling, he pushes his whole foot into the tiny gap between Eddie’s legs, settles with the arch of his foot pressed against the curve of Eddie’s knee. “I gotta protect your other arm from that fuckin' clown.”

Eddie noticeably stiffens at the mention of It, and there’s an apology—an honest to God _apology_ from the _Trashmouth_ —dancing on Richie’s tongue, but then Eddie rolls his eyes. He shifts slightly and clamps his knees together against Richie’s foot, not hard enough to hurt but certainly hard enough for Richie to feel his foot tingling at the squeeze.

“You’re nuts for even _being here_. If my mom finds you, she’ll beat you to death.”

“God, don’t threaten me with a good time, Eds.”

Eddie pushes him (deserved), nearly rolling him off the bed (also deserved), but he quickly winds his good arm around Richie’s waist and yanks him back, steadying him. Once he's in place, Eddie doesn't move his arm, wriggling closer to rest his head against Richie’s bony shoulder.

“Your mom won’t be mad?” Eddie asks. His breath feels hot against the sleeve of Richie’s Hawaiian shirt as it flutters over Richie’s upper arm, the skin there goosebumping up at the humid warmth of it.

“Nah, told her I might stay here.” When his mom praised him for going to get Eddie's bike, telling him what a good friend he was, he used her good mood as a nice in for telling her he _might stay at Eds’ and be back until morning, don't wait up_.

“If you stay, will you tell me who punched you in the face?”

Richie rolls his eyes, then moves off the bed to close the window and flick the overhead light off. When he lays back down, he tugs on the chain of Eddie’s bedside lamp, then he flings an arm around Eddie and tugs him close so hard Eddie squeaks.

“Watch the arm, dickweed!” Eddie whisper-shrieks, even as he nuzzles himself in so close Richie thinks he might be trying to burrow into his skin.

“Shut up, pipsqueak,” Richie bitches back, rubbing at Eddie’s shoulder with the tips of his fingers, “Do you want to know what happened to my money maker or not?”

\---

“You’re nuts if you think anyone’s going to fucking believe that cockamamie story.”

“ _Cockamamie_? Who the fuck _are_ you, my grandpa?”

“Shut up, dickhead.”

“Make me, tiny.”

Eddie shoves his shoulder into Richie’s, probably harder than is strictly necessary, but he’s gotta teach the fucker a lesson somehow, so maybe it’s warranted. Eddie watches on in smug satisfaction as Richie wobbles on the tight-rope edge of the curb that he’s toeing his way along.

They’re walking home from the library, books tucked under their arms. They’d both blown off their assigned summer reading until the last minute—Eddie wouldn’t have, really, if Richie didn’t tell him dozens of times that it _won't take long, why are you gonna waste good summer days on reading, Eds, don’t be a dork_ —and were going to cram it into their last week of freedom. Senior high starts for the Losers that next Monday, and that’s definitely why Richie is working on spinning a tall tale about meeting some girl at church camp and swapping spit with her. He’s working out the disgusting details, workshopping them with Eddie under the guise of it really being true, and after the third time Richie says some gross shit about the way her strawberry lip gloss tasted when he slipped her the tongue, Eddie is fit to explode.

“We spent the whole fucking summer together, Richie,” Eddie continues, rubbing a rough hand over his own shoulder; it aches a little where he rammed into Richie because the motherfucker is built like a bony brickhouse now that he's hit his first big growth spurt and the rest of him is trying to fill out to catch up. Eddie's words are rushing together, and he’s getting fed up with the conversation. It doesn’t matter, not really, but talking to Richie almost always has Eddie ready to scream within ten minutes, and Richie’s been working on this story for at least twelve. “You didn’t even go to church camp.”

“Yes, I fucking did!” Richie is gesturing madly with his free hand, the one not attached to the arm squeezing his summer reading book, _The Outsiders_ , into his ribs. Eddie happens to know Richie has already read _The Outsiders_ , liked _The Outsiders_ so much that he blabbed to Eddie about it for a week and a half. The line Richie is feeding to everyone is that the book was on the list and _it’ll be way fuckin’ easier_ , but Eddie knows he just wants to reread it. “I went to visit my cousins in Bangor for the weekend and I went to that fucking all-day church camp that Saturday! Suck my dick, Edward!”

Eddie rolls his eyes, shoves him again. “Yeah, but you didn’t kiss a girl there.”

“I did too!”

“You’re crazy. No one’s gonna believe that.”

“Do you believe it?”

“ _Did_ you kiss a girl at your cousin’s Jesus camp, Richie?”

Richie turns to Eddie and blinks behind his glasses. He’d forgone the Coke-bottles for ones that had a slightly thinner lens after his optometrist said his eyesight had improved a little. Eddie was glad, because he could see Richie’s eyes much clearer now. He didn’t know why that was so important to him, but it was, and even though he could always see Richie’s eyes, could always make the other boy lock gazes with him, it was easier now.

He hadn’t said that, of course—instead, he said Richie looked less like a dumb frog. That had been enough to make Richie’s face break out in a giant, toothy smile, all chapped lips and overbite, reminding Eddie that Richie had full-on cried when his dad tried to fit him for braces and Wentworth had, for the time being, given up. Eddie knew, then, he was smart for not saying anything nicer. Richie's head was almost big enough that he couldn't fit through doors, and someone had to keep him grounded in the reality that even if _he_ thought he was cool, he was still a Loser like the rest of them.

Richie scrunches up his nose, then lets out a heavy breath through it.

“Well, no—”

“See! I fucking knew it was bullshit!”

“But you believed me!”

“I did _not_ , dickwad!”

“You wouldn’t have asked if you thought I didn’t do it!”

God, Richie could be fucking _infuriating_. Eddie can feel his nostrils flaring, his hands on his hips, and if Richie compares him to an angry momma hippo, like he always does, he is absolutely going to scream until his face turns fucking purple.

“That’s not how any of this works, pissbrain!”

“Is so!”

“What are you, five?” Eddie asks. He slams into Richie a third time, the hardest yet, just to get some of that pent-up aggression out.

“What are you, five?” Richie mocks Eddie in a surprisingly good impression of Eddie’s voice. He’s nailed that one, apparently, along with a pretty spot-on Bill Voice and a maybe-a-little-offensive-if-he-wasn’t-also-Jewish Stanley Voice. Stan has assured them all, time and again, that it's still offensive.

Eddie bumps into him again, trying to hide the grin slowly spreading across his face. He can’t, under any circumstances, let Richie win this. Richie looks at him and definitely sees the way Eddie’s lips quirk up at the corners, and Richie grins back, open and happy for a second, and something inside Eddie’s gut lurches and twists, and he feels very overwhelmed with something, by _something_ , but he can’t put his finger on it.

Richie’s grin turns devilish and he shoves Eddie back, at least twice as hard as Eddie had pushed him, and watches as the smaller boy practically sails through the air. Eddie lands ass-first in Mrs. Wilder’s hedge. Richie guffaws with reckless abandon, hands braced on his knees as he doubles over with giggles, the library copy of _The Outsiders_ smacking into the sidewalk.

Eddie huffs and glares at him, still clutching his own book as he tries to wiggle out of the hedge. He feels decidedly violated by at least ten little branches stabbing at his thighs, and he wishes he would have worn something longer on his legs than his red running shorts.

“Christ, come here,” Richie laughs, reaching both hands out to Eddie. When Eddie links their fingers together, Richie tugs, and Eddie pushes against the ground with his feet. They grunt in unison as Eddie is finally freed, popping up.

“You _suck_.”

With that, Eddie is marching away, moving fast. Richie can catch up to him easy—his legs are, like, ten inches longer, after all—but Eddie makes a point of speeding up to the point of almost running.

“Come on, you big baby, it was funny!” Richie tries, shoving the copy of _The Outsiders_ into the back pocket of his jeans, which is a feat, considering how tight the ripped denim is against Richie’s skin. Eddie flushes a little when he realizes he’s thinking about that, for some reason, especially when he’s got bigger things on his mind, like making Richie feel bad enough that he buys Eddie some kind of snack.

Richie brushes his shoulder against Eddie’s, soft and gentle this time, a sign of true affection and fondness, but Eddie isn’t buying it. When it doesn’t work, Richie sighs, quickening his pace to keep up with Eddie. Eddie almost preens at that—he’s always been fast, especially when he forgets that he isn’t supposed to be, is supposed to be delicate and need his inhaler after, like, six steps, and there have been several times over the summer that Richie has asked if he plans to join the senior high’s track team.

“Alright, shithead, what do you want? You want ice cream?”

Eddie grins. This is a familiar game, their usual cat-and-mouse, and it’s inevitable that they’d wind up here at some point in their afternoon together.

“Alright, alright, let’s go,” Richie says, grumbling in fake annoyance. Eddie knows it’s fabricated, though, and he has a feeling that Richie's got a couple bucks stuffed in his pocket expressly _for_ ice cream. Eddie lets Richie steer him, hand on the small of his back, around the corner at the end of the block, towards Coney’s Ice Cream Parlor. They should be worried, maybe, about someone seeing them, but neither of them can seem to care. Maybe it’s the heat of the late-summer day making them warm and silly and stupid, or maybe it’s because this is part of the cat-and-mouse game, too.

Not ten minutes later, they’re out of the little shop, each holding an ice cream cone with two scoops of the day’s flavor. It’s mint chip, but they’re calling it Grasshopper Deluxe, which Richie thinks is so dumb he refuses to call it that when he orders the cones, Eddie bouncing on his toes at his side because mint chip is his absolute favorite.

After Eddie takes a big lick of his top scoop, Richie squints at the chocolate chunks on his own, then turns to Eddie and asks, his tone serious, “Are the chocolate things supposed to be grasshopper shit? Like, is that what they’re going for?”

“Richie!”

“What? I’m just asking!”

Eddie grunts and shoves against him, but still licks the ice cream again and fixes Richie with a glare.

“ _You’re_ a grasshopper shit.”

Richie grins wide, leans in to lick at Eddie’s cone even though he has his own, and when Eddie whines high in his throat in annoyance, Richie cackles like a lunatic. “Aw, honey, I love it when you call me names.”

\---

“ _Shit_.”

Eddie is walking, stiff, beside Richie, to the front of the Derry Townhouse. All of the spots along the sidewalk were taken up by the other Losers’ cars, so he and Richie had parked in the tiny back lot. Eddie isn’t sure why he feels so inclined to stick to Richie’s side like they’re attached at the hip, but it feels safe, feels familiar, and that’s what he needs right now to be able to fight off the sheer panic that keeps threatening to take over his body.

The dinner had been great, for the most part. Eddie knocked back enough beers to forget about his (maybe not real, he doesn’t know anymore) food allergies and snatch a bite of Richie’s lo mein, they laughed too loud, probably disturbing the whole fuckin’ restaurant, and they really got to catch up. Even though Eddie hadn’t remembered any of them until Mike called the day before, these were his _people_ and he loved them, missed them, was happy to bitch and scream and laugh with them.

Then the table started shaking and the fortune cookies started turning into fucking monsters and Eddie really, really regretted not stashing an inhaler in his pocket when their fortunes combined together to read out _WELCOME HOME LOSERS PENNYWISE MISSED YOU SO_. Mike told them why he invited them back and everyone had a collective panic attack in the parking lot, and Eddie was walking to his car, ready to go the hell home, when the other two thirds of Team Think First, Act Later, Ben and Stanley, suggested they hear Mike out, and Fearless Leader, Big Bill, stuttered out his agreement. The tiny thirteen year old inside Eddie wouldn’t let him leave, then, so he turned a nervous glance to Richie and Beverly, who were passing a cigarette back and forth, and it was decided that no one was leaving Derry until they at least let Mike explain everything.

“Fucking _what_?” Eddie shouts, sounding more irritated than he means to as he snaps his head to glare at Richie, who is looking at the townhouse’s sign. Under _DERRY TOWNHOUSE_ , in front of _VACANCY_ in big letters, there is a half-assed, hand-written _no_ slapped to the marquee board with Scotch tape.

“I should have fucking booked ahead, huh?” Richie mutters, scratching blunt nails over his stubbled cheek. He gestures to the board, and Eddie narrows his eyes.

Really, this is perfect. He’s buzzing with anxious energy and he needs to scream his head off, and Richie feels like a comfortable, almost inevitable, option.

“What the fuck do you _mean_ you should’a booked ahead?” Eddie seethes through clenched teeth, breath puffing out in harsh pants through his nose, “You didn’t fucking _think_ to book ahead? Where the hell is your shit if it isn’t in your fucking room?”

Richie rolls his eyes, not even having the decency to look sheepish as he grips the straps of the backpack he’s shouldering. “We’re gonna be here for, like, a day and a half, Eds.”

“Don’t fucking call me that!”

That, too, feels inevitable. It’s almost comforting, and it would have been, probably, if Eddie wasn’t so annoyed he felt like he was going to shoot off into the fucking stratosphere.

“Jesus, is that any way to talk to your bunkie?” Richie asks, finally looking a little less smug as he glances down at the sidewalk under their feet, then up to Eddie with a hopeful glimmer in his big eyes.

“Bunkie? Oh, _hell no_ , you're fucking _insane_ if you think I'm doubling up with you, numbnuts,” Eddie snaps, shaking his head as they turn to march up the stairs in front of the building.

“I’ll pay halfsies.”

“You’ll pay— _Richie_ , that’s not why!” Honestly, Eddie doesn’t _know_ why, but that isn’t it. “Go make Stan share with you!”

By this point, they’re in the lobby, where the other Losers are congregating. Bev is smoking another cigarette, and Eddie, for a brief second, wants to explain to her, in great detail, the dangers of secondhand smoke, but, you know, bigger fish.

“Make me do what?” Stan asks, an eyebrow arched up above the top of his glasses. He’s slumped against the bar, looking a little drained, the top button of his dress shirt popped open. Ben is leaning next to him, with Bill and Mike standing close together on his other side.

“Share a room with dumbshit over here who didn’t book one for himself,” Eddie says, fingers of his right hand moving to twist at his wedding band. It feels like an uncomfortable weight against his finger even though he hasn't taken it off, except to clean it, since his wedding day a decade and a half prior. He doesn’t let himself think too hard about what that might mean.

Richie snorts and swipes Bev’s cigarette, holding up a finger in _a one sec, Bev_ as he pops it between his lips, and takes a deep drag, lets the smoke curl back out through his nose, and hands it back. “No way. Stan’s a strange bedfellow—motherfucker kicks like a donkey and you know it, Eds.”

“Don’t fucking call me—”

“Shit, I forgot I used to do that,” Stan says, a soft, fond smile stretching across his lips.

“Y-you n-ne-never did it to me,” Bill responds at the end of a laugh. He’s rooting through the bar’s liquor stash and grabs a finger-printed glass before he pours himself a finger of some kind of dark whiskey whose label Eddie can’t place. “Only to R-Ri-Richie.”

Richie smirks back at them and shakes his head. “Probably to his wife, too.”

“Nah, she’s never mentioned it.” Stan shrugs a shoulder up, runs a hand through his gelled curls, “You can share with me, Rich, but I reserve the right to smother you if you still snore like a fucking garbage disposal.”

“It’s a sinus condition!” Richie defends, scandalized.

“If you would’a gotten fucking braces to fix that overbite, you wouldn’t snore so bad, beaver boy.” Stan says back.

Everyone laughs, Richie’s goose-honk the loudest of them all, and the tension in the room dissipates a little, even though the air is still thick with it.

“You’re really gonna make me share a room with him, Eduardo?” Richie asks through the last of his chuckles, turning a familiar _help me, Eds, they’re bullyin’ me_ look to Eddie, who makes a face in return that sends Richie into laughter again. “He’s liable to kick me in the kidney and he just PTSD’d me with the name I got called the time Bowers kicked me in the nuts so hard I hurled! On that note, is that any way to treat your friends, Stanley?”

“Friend is a strong word,” Stan drones, and everyone laughs again.

Eddie turns to Richie fully and looks him in the eye, and that, for some reason, makes his stomach swirl in a way that’s almost painful. He worries he might be having a reaction to that bite of lo mein finally, but, really, that’s probably not it.

“You can sleep on my floor,” he says finally, shoving a shoulder into Richie’s.

“Sleep on the _floor_?” Richie echoes, his voice so goddamn loud and horrified that Mike, who has remained the calmest of them—he knows something, clearly, knows everything the rest of them don't—snickers into the drink Bill had pushed towards him. “Eds—"

“Don’t call me that, asshole.”

“ _Eddie_ , take one look at this body and tell me exactly what about it screams ‘ _yeah, I can fuck around and sleep on the floor_.’ I’m fucking _forty_ , dude. I have sciatica!”

*

“You want left or right?”

Everyone told each other goodnight just after ten. Mike said something about needing to set out as early as possible the next morning, gave everyone orders to be up and ready to go by five before he headed home with promises to bring them all coffee when he came back.

Eddie had, much to his own chagrin, finally agreed to bunk with Richie after the appropriate amount of bitching. The more he thought about it, the less he actually minded doing it, but he couldn't let anyone else know that. He had his reputation as the friend group’s biggest complainer to uphold.

"I don't care," Eddie sighs, swinging the larger of his two suitcases onto the little bench by the foot of the bed. He starts rooting through it for his pajamas and electric toothbrush.

"Well, what side do you usually sleep on?" Richie pushes, plopping down on the bed to dig through his backpack, "I'll take whichever side the missus is usually on. It's good practice for being your mistress, handsome."

Eddie lets out a pissy snort, allows his mouth to say something before his brain catches up: "I haven't shared a bed with someone since, like, '02. Take whatever side you fucking want."

Richie just kind of looks at him like he's grown a second head, and maybe he has, who fucking knows. Before Richie can say anything, though, Eddie zips his suitcase closed and goes toward the ensuite, slamming the door behind him with too much force.

He ponders, as he moves his Quip over his teeth, what crawled up his ass. They're all tense, sure, and _freaked outta our gourds, dude,_ as Richie elegantly put it when Eddie glared at him for bumming a smoke from Bev before bed, because of course they are, but Eddie feels irrationally agitated. He’s remembering, though, every time he looks at Richie, feeling like this a lot at twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—. Back then, he'd assumed it was just, like, puberty, his body unable to deal with all the testosterone and the ever-present memories of that fucking alien clown. Now, though, he's feeling it as a full adult, with a wife and fucking dental insurance and shit, and he doesn't really know what’s happening.

He spits and rinses his mouth with a travel bottle of Listerine. After he pisses and washes his hands with the townhouse bar of soap—he’d shower, but he showered when he got to the townhouse before he headed to the Jade for dinner, and he knows how dry his skin will get if he scrubs it again—Eddie swaps out his clothes for his pajamas, a pair of flannel pants that drag on the floor when he walks because Myra got them and always forgets what size he wears and a faded t-shirt he'd gotten at some bullshit color run he did at Myra's niece's school. It still bears the splattery stains of the powder people had tossed at the runners, and if he looks hard enough at them, he can feel the nasty shit in his throat, threatening to close it, and he remembers the argument he and Myra had on the way home about why he shouldn't volunteer for things he's _too sensitive for, Eddie-bear_.

When Eddie comes back to the main room, he watches the way Richie stands up too fast and his eyes flutter behind his glasses for a second before he finds his balance.

"You good?" Eddie asks, dumping his clothes into the little plastic bag the townhouse provided for laundry.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Richie nods, gesturing to the bathroom before he walks to it, "Low iron. Sometimes when I get up too fast, I, like, trip balls for a sec."

While Richie does his thing in the bathroom, Eddie paces the room a couple times, then finds the remote and flicks on the little flat screen that sits atop the chest of drawers on the wall opposite the queen bed. He's convinced he'll see the clown or the leper or some other wacky shit, but he actually just scrolls through the channels until he settles on the Food Network, then crawls under the covers—on the right side of the bed—to watch Bobby Flay try to, like, learn how to make doughnuts before he challenges the doughnut king of Tallahassee or some shit.

"I'm not gonna be able to sleep," Richie says as he emerges from the bathroom. He's dressed in a pair of holey gray sweats and a _FRANKIE SAY RELAX_ shirt with a collar so stretched out Eddie can see, like, way too much of his chest hair. While Eddie stares at him, Richie, who's in his own head too much to notice, walks over to lock the door, one hand scratching absently at his belly as he turns the overhead light off.

"You want something for it?" Eddie asks when he can get his mouth and his brain to cooperate, wonders why the fuck Richie Tozier having a hairy chest makes him feel so dangerously close to aroused his head spins, and this, like so many other things this evening, feels inevitable. "I have melatonin gummies and these ginger sleep-aid capsules and maybe a couple Klonopin and I might have brought along some Trazodone—"

"Jesus _Christ_ , did you leave anything on the shelf at your local Walgreens or is it just a shell of its former self?"

Eddie scowls—he was just trying to be _nice_ , damn it—and it deepens when Richie notices the look and chuckles dryly, sliding into the bed next to Eddie. They aren't close enough to touch, but they're close enough that Eddie can feel the heat of him—lanky bastard always was practically a space heater—and it makes him tense.

"You good?" Richie asks, shuffling down so that he's lying on the flat pillow. Eddie watches as he lifts himself up again with one hand and punches the pillow with the other, then rests his head again.

"Yeah." Eddie wiggles down, too, from where he's been sitting against the wicker headboard, and then they're just kind of lying there, Eddie half-watching Bobby Flay make a jelly doughnut and half-ignoring the way he can feel Richie's eyes on him.

"Look, man, I…" Richie says, clears his throat, furrows his brow, "I didn't, like… If you can't sleep next to someone, I'll… Stan won't actually mind?"

Part of Eddie thinks that's a fantastic idea, because he knows that someone in bed next to him will make sleeping very difficult, probably, but he can't make himself nod. Instead, his head just kind of shakes in a way that isn't a nod but isn't _not_ a nod.

"No, it's… It's fine, Rich."

"Really, Eds—"

"Don't—"

"Call you that, I know."

When Eddie chances a look back to Richie, tearing his eyes from the TV screen, Richie is smiling. Something inside Eddie makes him smile back.

"Listen, I said it's fine, so it's fine," Eddie says, tugging the blankets up to his chin, "You really want to talk about my marriage problems now, psycho? We have to sleep so we can go, like, catch a clown or whatever."

Richie keeps smiling even as he slides his glasses off and folds the legs in, tosses them onto the nightstand. He shrugs a shoulder up, then rolls onto his belly.

"Okay, we'll talk about why you don't fuck your wife after we catch the clown," Richie says, speaking entirely into his pillow, "Roger that, Spaghetti."

Eddie wants to scream at him, but it's late, and he's dumbstruck by the sound of Richie's voice calling him that for the first time in over two decades, and Richie isn't exactly wrong, so.

"Stop thinking and go to bed," Richie grunts beside him, one arm coming up out of the blankets to flap uselessly towards the television, "I've seen this one, and he doesn't beat the guy because he fucks up the yeast."

And Eddie, who should be fucking terrified about being home, about the clown, about sleeping next to his childhood best friend-cum-crush—God, _crush_ , he remembers what that feeling is, now, and he's going to barf—can’t find it in himself to disagree, so he nestles down and shuts his eyes.

\---

“Dude, you need to leave your wife.”

Eddie feels his face pinch up as he stares at his phone screen, a bite of sausage, egg, and cheese croissant from Dunkin turning into mush in his mouth. He swallows it down and shakes his head.

They do this a lot, several times a week—it had started out as once a week, just on Wednesdays, but then Richie got his days fucked up and called Eddie on a Tuesday and all bets were off. Eddie leaves the office a couple minutes after five, shoots a text to Myra that they’re making him work overtime, so he doesn’t know when he’ll be home, and goes to Planet Fitness for an hour. After he works out and showers, he goes back to the car and Facetimes Richie, pops his phone into the AmazonBasics phone mount he Prime’d for himself when they started doing this a couple weeks after Derry, and drives to some fast-food place. He orders through the drive-thru, then parks in the lot and eats something he’s supposed to be allergic to while he and Richie shoot the shit for what can easily turn into two hours or more.

It’s great. It’s Eddie’s favorite thing, actually, and now that they’re past the point of lying to each other that _yeah, I do this with the others, too_ —Eddie does talk to Bev a lot and he knows Richie and Stan call each other on Sundays and they both keep up with the group chat Mike made for the seven of them, but still—it’s even better.

Except for when Richie pops off with some wild bullshit that makes Eddie wish he regretted being best friends with an idiot. The unfair thing, though, is that he almost always agrees with whatever Richie says, and that snaps him back to being the kid ready to follow Richie everywhere so fast he swears he gets whiplash.

“Are you fucking _nuts_?” Eddie asks, picking up his frozen hot chocolate—Richie fucking snorted when he ordered it, the prick, but it’s _good_ —and taking a long pull off the straw. “Like, actually lost your goddamn marbles, man? I can’t just _leave my wife_.”

Actually, he _can_ , and he _might_ , and he’s been talking it over with Bev, has the name of a good divorce lawyer. But, he’s not about to tell Richie shit about that until it’s official. He doesn’t ever hear the end of this stuff with Richie as it is, and if he chickens out, he knows Richie won’t let him live it down.

“Eddie,” Richie says around a handful of the dry cereal he’s snacking on while they talk and he works on new material—half of these calls is Richie running new shit by Eddie since he promised himself that if he made it out of Derry alive, he’d stop using the stupid ghostwriters, and Eddie is so stupidly proud of every dumb joke it almost makes him weepy—and that snaps Eddie’s attention back to him fully. “You’re Facetiming me from a fucking Dunkin parking lot while your _wife_ thinks you’re working overtime at a job that doesn’t even fucking _offer_ overtime—”

“Richie—” Eddie tries, even though he knows better, knows Richie will just talk over him.

“—all because you know your wife will piss and moan and call me a bad influence! You’re _forty years old_ , dude, and still taking orders from your fucking mother.”

“ _Richie_ —”

“ _No_ , Eddie, I’m right! This is the same shit that happened when we were kids and your mom wouldn’t let me in the house because I was Trashmouth Tozier, the loudmouth Jew that had little Eddie running around like a little terror—"

“ _Richie_!” Eddie almost screams, hands digging into the Dunkin bag hard enough to tear the flimsy paper. Richie shuts up, then, and just glares at Eddie for a second before he’s shoveling another handful of Honeycombs into his big mouth.

As usual, Richie is right, absolutely right, even if he is crass about it. Things had been that way since they were in kindergarten, and Richie’s big brain and bigger mouth would only get him into trouble until everyone realized, several minutes too late, that Richie wasn’t _wrong_ , he just didn’t know how to express himself in a way that didn’t involve being too loud and talking about dicks.

“I’m just _saying_ ,” Richie defends after he swallows his cereal, his shoulders hunching up as he looks away from his phone screen to scribble something down in his notebook, “that you… You’re not happy, Eds.”

Eddie wants to tell Richie for the billionth time not to call him that, that _Eddie is already a nickname, asshole, you’re making a nickname of a nickname_ , but he doesn’t, and it isn’t just because Richie will say _nickname-ception_ or some equally dumb shit that will make Eddie laugh even when he tries not to.

“You’re not happy,” Richie presses on, turning back to the screen and looking just off of the camera, and Eddie knows he’s doing that thing where he tries to look into Eddie’s eyes from the other side of the country, “and you’re not in love with her and you deserve, like, to feel good, man. You killed a fucking killer clown from outer space _twice_ and you saved my ass and someone who does that kinda shit shouldn’t be stuck in prison inside his own home.”

Fuck, Eddie feels like he might cry. They’ve danced around it before, spend a lot of time talking about what Eddie’s life is like these days, but it’s never been like this. Eddie wonders if Bev spilled the beans about him thinking about separating from Myra, but he knows Bev wouldn’t do that, didn’t even tell Ben yet because Eddie hadn’t given her the go-ahead. That means, though, that all of this is coming from Richie, coming right from his heart, the one that was always too big but just the right size to match his brain and his mouth, and that’s why Eddie feels tears prickling behind his eyes.

“And do what, Rich?” he asks, finally, when he can trust his voice not to give out. He takes another sip of his frozen drink for good measure. “If I… I leave my wife and, what, come stay with you?”

He winces when he says it. He didn’t mean to, really didn’t, and he knows if they weren’t having a Moment, Richie would laugh in his face and ask if his gay rubbed off on Eddie— _that_ was another development in and of itself, Richie coming out to them, to himself, at the quarry after they iced the clown, leaving Eddie to wonder if the things he’d been feeling for Richie since they would hold hands on the way to recess as kids were deeper than just pangs of friendship and kiddie crushes, if maybe _he_ was gay, too—but they _are_ having a Moment, and Richie just looks openly at him, face steeled and even under his stubble.

“If you want to,” Richie says, shrugging a still-hunched shoulder up another inch or so, “the offer from Derry still stands, man.”

Richie had drunkenly told them all, while looking directly at Eddie, that he had the room to board and feed any and all of them any time they needed it. The sentiment was quickly echoed by Bill and Ben and Stan, but Richie kept looking at Eddie.

“You were supposed to visit, anyway.”

Eddie blinks at his phone, nursing the sweaty, cold plastic cup between his hands. “Huh?”

“You said you’d visit.” Richie isn’t looking at him, staring pointedly down at his notebook even though Eddie can tell he isn’t writing anything. “Said you’d come see LA once you got settled back at home.”

“Rich, it’s been—”

“Three months, Eds, I know. Would’a thought you’d be settled in three months, but whatever, dude.” He almost sounds hurt, and maybe he is, because the sound of his voice is making Eddie hurt a little, too.

Things get quiet and tense. Eddie sips at his drink and tumbles everything Richie has said in his mind, both from this conversation and all the ones before. Richie spending too long in a guest room while giving Eddie a Facetime tour of his too-big-for-one-dude house, Richie texting him pictures of cute dogs he sees out the window of his Uber on the way to shows and meetings and asking what they’d name it if it was theirs, Richie asking Eddie if he’s figured out what, if anything, he’s _actually_ allergic to so that Richie knows which food trucks to take him to when he finally gets his ass in gear and buys a plane ticket, and _fuck_ , Eddie knows what the next step is, and his heart thunders when he thinks about it, but not in a way that feels anxious or scared.

He’s going to go to LA. He’s going to tell Myra he’s leaving and he’s going to take his shit to LA and go through the rotten divorce proceedings and he’s going to find the guts to tell Richie that he’s madly in love with him and they’re going to live happily ever after, come hell or high water.

Eddie grabs his phone and opens up his Chrome app, types in the name of the divorce lawyer, then opens a second tab to look up Southwest flights. After another couple minutes of silence, only broken by breathing and Richie’s pencil scratching over notebook paper and Richie chewing on his cereal, Eddie sets the phone back in the mount and clears his throat.

“Can you be at LAX next Tuesday? I land at two o’clock.”

\---

“Do you wanna, like, go on a date sometime?”

It’s been almost four months since Eddie flew into LAX with his whole life tucked away into two checked suitcases, a duffle bag, and a backpack. Almost four months since Richie dragged both of Eddie’s suitcases out of the back of his Volvo—fuck you, it gets good gas mileage—and shoved them into his living room before he offered to go grab them street tacos from the place up the road while Eddie started unpacking.

That means that it’s been just about four months, give or take a day, since he told his wife he was fucking off and flying the coop to the City of Angels to live with his loudmouth, long-lost best friend that his wife didn’t even like him talking _about_ , letting alone talking _to_.

Richie is surprised he’s managed to make it this long before he broke down and asked him out.

Eddie looks up from where he’s stirring a HelloFresh seasoning packet into their sesame sriracha stir-fry, his expression a little dumbfounded and a little relieved. Richie doesn’t really know what to make of that, so he just leans against the kitchen island, letting the corner of the marble top dig into the tender spot on his hip just above the waistband of his jeans, and he waits.

“Are you _crazy_?”

Well, fuck, there goes the wind right outta his sails, and he feels his lungs shrivel up inside his chest. God damn it, he’s been reading this whole situation wrong, apparently, which is nothing new, is just like being a kid again. He remembers Conner Bowers, and that hadn’t even been a thing he read wrong, he just wanted to play Street Fighter, but hot shame washes over him now just like it did then.

“Eds, man, I—"

“Do you think what we’ve been doing every time we go out somewhere isn’t a _date_ , asshole?”

Fucking _pardon_?

“Whadda’ya mean?” Richie asks, but he sidles up to the counter next to Eddie, grabs the little bundle of green onions that’ll garnish their meal and starts chopping them on the cutting board, because, suddenly, this conversation is promising.

He knows what Eddie means, kinda. They have been… going on _dates_ , he guesses, the whole time he’s been in LA, especially since Eddie’s rushed divorce papers were signed by Myra after he gave her the house without argument, said he already had a place to live where he was—by his own angry insistence—paying half the monthly mortgage payments for, _so, sure, Marty, take the house, I don’t need it_. Right after the Skype-in meeting where he watched her sign the official document, he’d come out of the guest room and flung his arms around Richie, where he was sitting at the table and trying to write, said he was a free man, and dropped a big kiss to the crown of Richie’s head.

Maybe that should have been a sign, even though Eddie did blush like a virgin after and cough so hard he had to dig through the pantry to find the stash of Halls cough drops he’d bitched to Richie about buying the last time they went to CVS. That night, at dinner, when Richie asked what he wanted to watch to celebrate the big D being done with, Eddie hummed in thought and said he’d be done for anything with Jake Gyllenhaal, especially anything where he’s at least half-naked, and that was Eddie’s subtle, Kaspbrakian way of coming out to him before he dropped eight pride flag emojis in the group chat and said he was free of the clutches of heterosexual married life.

After that day, which was maybe three weeks ago, Eddie had been back to the cuddly, spitfire little guy he was when they were kids. He hadn’t lost the spark altogether, but the world had definitely beat some of it out of him, so Richie was just happy to, like, watch the light come back into his eyes for more than just a couple’a minutes at a time. He screamed at Richie when they played Mexican Rat Race on the coffee table while sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce against the hardwood until their asses hurt, bitched about Richie’s driving on the way to their—was _Richie’s_ , is now _theirs_ , holy shit—favorite little Italian place until Richie got sick of it and pulled over to let him drive, sat too close to Richie on the sofa while they had a Back to the Future marathon in sweatpants and ate so many bowls of Orville Redenbacher Cheddar Cheese Popcorn that Eddie whined about not being to shit for three days after.

God, Richie’s an _idiot_.

“Whadda’I _mean_?” Eddie echoes, stirring the beef and carrot mixture with a wooden spoon. He turns to face Richie, one hand on his hip, and it makes the oversized NASA shirt—Richie’s shirt, fuck, he’s so goddamn stupid—ride up enough to expose a smidge of tan flank. “Richie, I’ve been… We’ve… Man, I didn’t expect you’d be asking to _go on a date_ , I was hoping you’d be asking me to _date you_ , you ignoramus.”

And then, because Richie’s mouth always moves before his brain, because the two are having a constant pissing contest that his mouth never loses, he leans in and kisses Eddie square on the lips, just plants on one him, chaste and so fast he could almost deny it happened if Eddie gets mad.

Except Eddie doesn’t get mad, and when Richie pulls back more than an inch to look into his eyes, Eddie’s hands are suddenly on Richie’s waist, tugging him closer and, oh, they’re kissing again.

Richie loses himself in it for a moment, but the second he pokes his tongue out to run it over Eddie’s lip, Eddie pulls back, and Richie thinks he’s royally fucked up before Eddie shoots him a sunny grin.

“You’re a goddamn psycho, you know that?” Eddie asks, trying to sound harsh but really just sounding so fond Richie feels it vibrating through him all the way down to his toenails. He’s back to stirring the stuff in the pan and dumps in the little bottle of sriracha. “But, sure, I’ll go on a date with you, you big loser.”

Richie beams, feels his grin growing wide across his face as he bumps his shoulder into Eddie’s and dices the green onions a little smaller.

“Cool.”

“ _Cool_?” Eddie repeats, incredulous, and he whacks Richie’s forearm with the clean end of the spoon, “That’s all you got?”

“No, wait, how about... _yowza_?”

Eddie laughs, bright and happy, and Richie feels the way his chest swells up with pride and excitement, and he absently plans to ride the high of _Eddie likes me back_ for the rest of his life.

\---

“Can I ask you a dumb question?”

Eddie’s eyes sparkle as he brings his glass of wine to his lips and takes a small sip. “Don’t you always?”

Richie grins. For their date night that week, Eddie had said something about wanting to stay in, so Richie got everything set up while Eddie was working in the home office for most of the late-morning and early-afternoon. Richie had, with help from Ben, who he Facetimed in a panic when he realized he didn’t fucking remember how to build a successful blanket fort, strung up every spare blanket in the house in their living room, cocooning the throws and quilts and sheets around the TV and the cheap Pier 1 Imports lamp he’d had since he moved to LA. Because Ben was such a genius architect, and so damn good at giving Richie instructions, the fort was almost as big as the room itself, with ample space for them to hide out inside it, Richie’s back cushioned enough that it didn’t even twinge with pain. Once that was done, he ordered pizza, grabbed a cheap bottle of wine from the rack they bought at a flea market in Huntington Beach, along with the comically-large glasses that said _Mazel Tov_ in sparkly pink letters—a gift from Stan after Richie sent the group chat a picture of Eddie sleeping in his bed with the caption _secured the bag_ —and waited for Eddie to finish up his shift of terrorizing elderly men until they bought enough life insurance or whatever.

When Eddie stepped out of the office and saw what Richie built, he let out a noise of such joy Richie almost thought it was distress.

The pizza arrived and they got inside the fort, flicked through the channels until they settled on a rerun of House—Eddie prides himself in being able to diagnose the weird diseases faster than Richie, who, in truth, doesn’t give a shit and spends most of his time watching the hot Australian doctor—and opened the wine. They crushed the bottle in two big glasses, and Richie opened a second before either of them realized how wine-tipsy and silly they feel.

“Yeah, it’s kind of my thing,” Richie says, swiping a slice of pepperoni off of Eddie’s piece of pizza, which gets him a slap on the hand in response. “But, like, seriously, can I?”

Eddie just nods, his attention fully turned away from the TV and onto Richie instead, and that’s a little intimidating, but it’s also what he explicitly asked for, so Richie can’t complain, really.

“What’s on your mind, bub?” Eddie asks, tongue poking out to wet his lips, and Richie’s heart clenches and soars at the pet name. Sure, they call each other names a lot, but Eddie very rarely hits him with a sweet one, and it makes Richie’s whole day every time. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I just…” Richie shrugs, takes a big swig of his wine and puffs his cheeks out with it before he swallows it down, “Would you… would it be crazy for me to, like, ask you to marry me? Not _now_ , don’t worry, but, uh… Someday?”

Eddie blushes high on his cheeks, like he does when Richie calls him sweetheart in bed, like he does when Richie, in a fit of horniess and love, scoops him up and carries him fireman-style to their bedroom, Eddie slapping at his ass the entire way, like he does every time Richie says he loves him, and Richie has a feeling he knows what the answer is.

“Uh…” Eddie says, voice sounding a little ragged. He takes another sip from the wine glass he’s holding. “I mean… It wouldn’t be crazy, no.”

“I didn’t mean to freak you out, I just…” Richie swallows, his tongue feeling thick and heavy in his mouth, “I didn’t, like, know if you… since you were married once already? But we… you know?”

Eddie, thank fuck, just bobs his head and gives Richie a shy smile, one that pops his left dimple out and shows just a flash of the straight, white teeth that Richie envied ridiculously until Eddie insisted the overbite was hot enough times, threatened to break up with Richie if he made the appointment with his dentist for Invisalign, and the fear that had Richie’s gut in a vice loosens in big, swooping twists.

“I get it, yeah, I… Yeah,” Eddie says, too fast, words coming out all mushed together, and Richie really has no choice but to lean in and brush his lips against the very corner of the shy smile still on Eddie’s face, “Just… It isn’t crazy. _You’re_ crazy, and most of the shit you say is nuts, but that… isn’t crazy.”

Richie smiles and nods once, pressing another kiss to Eddie’s lips before he turns back to the television and grabs a slice of pizza, pointing it vaguely in the direction of Hugh Laurie on the screen.

“Heyo, Spaghetti-O, he’s got his diagnosin’ face on!”

“Shit!” Eddie cries out in annoyance, fumbling for the remote so they can rewind, “I think she’s got some kinda weird infection, since her white count is fucked, but I missed the last white-board talk.”

And Richie just lets him do his thing, nods absently as Eddie babbles over the television after he rewinds it, says something about not letting Eddie donate a kidney to him if he’s planning on leaving, and Richie doesn’t really know what that means, but he doesn’t care, because he’s thinking too much about how it isn’t crazy, apparently, that he’s got plans to meet with Bill on Friday at the big jewelry store closest to both of them so Bill can, with the help of Stan and Bev on Facetime and Ben and Mike and his little sister in their _operation: eddie tozier_ group chat, assist him in picking out a ring.

**Author's Note:**

> BIG THANK YOU FOR READING and please let me know what you think! Comments and kudos are truly my bread and butter, so hmu and ask me about my other reddie ideas based on song lyrics on here or @summercarntspel on Tumblr and @polythene_sum on Twitter!


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